ust sceert her to death, that's what he done. For Gawd's
sake, boss, don't let on I tole you."

The negro, stopping suddenly in his game of craps in the Pell Street
back yard, glanced up with a look of agonized entreaty. Discovering no
such fell purpose in his questioner's face, he added quickly,
reassured:--

"And if he asks if you seed me a-playing craps, say no, not on yer
life, boss, will yer?" And he resumed the game where he left off.

An hour before he had seen Maggie Lynch die in that hallway, and it
was of her he spoke. She belonged to the tenement and to Pell Street,
as he did himself. They were part of it while they lived, with all
that that implied; when they died, to make part of it again,
reorganized and closing ranks in the trench on Hart's Island. It is
only the Celestials in Pell Street who escape the trench. The others
are booked for it from the day they are pushed out from the rapids of
the Bowery into this maelstrom that sucks under all it seizes.
Thenceforward they come to the surface only at intervals in the police
courts, each time more forlorn, but not more hopeless, until at last
they disappear and are heard of no more.

When Maggie Lynch turned the corner no one there knows. The street
keeps no reckoning, and it doesn't matter. She took her place
unchallenged, and her "character" was registered in due time. It was
good. Even Pell Street has its degrees and its standard of perfection.
The standard's strong point is contempt of the Chinese, who are hosts
in Pell Street. Maggie Lynch came to be known as homeless, without a
man, though with the prospects of motherhood approaching, yet she "had
never lived with a Chink." To Pell Street that was heroic. It would
have forgiven all the rest, had there been anything to forgive. But
there was not. Whatever else may be, cant is not among the vices of
Pell Street.

And it is well. Maggie Lynch lived with the Cuffs on the top floor of
No. 21 until the Cuffs moved. They left an old lounge they didn't
want, and Maggie. Maggie was sick, and the housekeeper had no heart to
put her out. Heart sometimes survives in the slums, even in Pell
Street, long after respectability has been hopelessly smothered. It
provided shelter and a bed for Maggie when her only friends deserted
her. In return she did what she could, helping about the hall and
stairs. Queer that gratitude should be another of the virtues the slum
has no power to smother, though dive and brothel a